Lore:Cheeses of Skyrim: Hjaalmarch, Haafingar

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Cheeses of Skyrim: Hjaalmarch, Haafingar

by B.

Notable cheeses of Western Skyrim

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At the behest of my correspondents, I have made great efforts to restrict the contents of my travel journal so as to not lose my reader's interest. In touring the holds of Skyrim, I was unsure through what lens I should present my travels. After a sumptuous meal at the start of my journey, I knew it must be food—and thus, my catalog of Skyrim's cheeses was born.

The land is as diverse as are its climes, and both mean the panoply of cheeses are vast. Again, for the sake of brevity, I sought to capture only the most noteworthy cheese from each hold I visited.

B.

Greenedge
Greenedge is a festive cheese, which I found to be rather peculiar due to the dour reputation of Hjaalmarch (and, in particular, its capital of Morthal). The name of the cheese, derived from the charming "baskets"—for there can be no other word for it—of rushes plucked from nearby bogs and woven together, speaks to both its visual appeal and the process of its creation. The cheese is brined and pressed within these baskets, with the latter process imbuing the rind of the normally cream-colored cheese with a verdant hue.

The way the locals eat the cheese is also curious. The consumption of Greenedge, customarily served at the end of feasts, has become something of a spectacle. Young hunters make a game of holding the rush-encased cheese over a flaming torch until its casing burns away and the cheese transforms into a near-molten state. Observers laud veterans of this ordeal for the showmanship they add to this feat, dancing the highly combustible cheese along the torch flame without pausing too long, lest the cheese blacken or their fingers burn.

Thus prepared, they flip the hot cheese onto a table and guests immediately plunge bread—or, occasionally, sliced apples—into the melted goodness. Children find particular joy in the activity, for at this point the cheese's secret contents are revealed—dried fruits and berries, and (in wealthier households) a single amber plum. The lucky eater that spears the plum before all others is named king of the feast.

Solitude Eidar
The greatest of the cheeses in Skyrim, in my opinion, is Solitude Eidar. Not because of its flavor or bizarre nature, but for its extreme rarity. Solitude Eidar is, as the name implies, an eidar cheese, being aged and inoculated with the spores of some fungus. And, like eidar, it is aged underground, in this case in the vaults below the ancient city. But here the similarities to regular eidar end.

First the source. Solitude Eidar is a masterful translation of Western Skyrim's staunch traditionalism to the practice of cheese-making, and this starts with the milk. Only cows that belonged to the herd of Jarl Svartr, first king of Western Skyrim, can provide milk for the cheese. The royal herd, descended from these cows, is maintained by loyal retainers. Milk arrives regularly in Solitude, where it undergoes inspection by a royal cheesemonger—a hereditary office within the Blue Palace. This connoisseur of dairy has exacting standards for the milk he inspects—indeed, for I have seen him—and only one out of every dozen barrels is deemed fit for the making of Solitude Eidar. The milk curdles in a precise fashion, using a series of hourglasses custom-made for the purpose. Lastly, they add a crumb of cheese from the previous batch into the next one—thus creating an unbroken chain of eidar dating back generations.

The result is, as I am led to understand, a cheese that has the precise appearance, aroma, and taste as it had in Svartr's day. I was skeptical until I was given two pieces of cheese, one preserved from decades ago, and one only recently cut from its rind. I was instructed to sample both and see if I could tell the difference.

I could not, and I wept.